Eating with Mother Nature

We've been thinking a lot about where our food comes from. For my birthday, my Aunt bought me the book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. When you read the back description of the book, you'll think it's something different than it is. Basically, it's about a family who decided to only eat local, in season food for one year. It has references to a lot of great information, and the author tends to go off on tangents about subjects that she is passionate about, but all in all, it will make you think.

I still haven't read the whole thing, but it did get me to thinking more about eating with the seasons. We have a year round farmers market here, and I am striving to grow about 90% of our food in the next few years.

As a result, I have started thinking a lot more about what is in season. It's very interesting to see what is season as the time passes. Right now, everyone is knee deep in winter squash! How many ways can one EAT pumpkin? I guess we are going to find out!

I'm going to try and share with you all what we are eating in each season. I would encourage all of you to find a local farmers market to do at least SOME of your shopping.

I'll also be preserving as much as I can from the Farmers Market, so we can eat food that hasn't traveled thousands of miles to get to my plate.

The number of miles (fossil fuel costs) your food travels is the second premise of the book. Not only should you eat in season, you should try to eat local. We're going to try that too. That's the second part of us eating with Mother Nature. If it can be grown nearby, we'll eat it. If not, we will try to reduce or eliminate those items from our diet.

Now there are a few things that we can't get local, that we will be purchasing, in bulk, so that we are limiting the packaging and costs. Those include flour, sugar, corn meal, beans, vanilla beans, olive oil, salt and pepper.

We do plan to grow corn (for corn meal) and wheat (for flour) in the spring. I will also be trying to find a local grower of beans. We are looking to replace almost all of our sugar usage with local honey, and there are places in the US that we can purchase olive oil, salt and pepper. I've even considered trying to grow vanilla and black pepper. We'll see how that goes. Haha.

Dairy we can get from local farms, except for good Parmesan cheese and Balsamic Vinegar. That will probably continue to come from Italy. Haha.

I figure if all we do is try to do better, we can improve our health, support our community and reduce our impact. I'm going with the "every little bit helps" theory.

The first thing we did was purchase two boxes of tomatoes. I'll have a separate post about what we did with them, but the first thing I did was make the most incredible Tomato Pie!

Because I want you all to have a chance to try it....Here's the recipe!

I really hope you guys try this. It was INCREDIBLE. Especially since the tomatoes were locally grown in a field, ripened on the vine, and were so fresh they were picked the same day we ate them! Wow.

Tomato Pie

For the pie crust (makes 2 crusts)

2 1/2 c. flour

1 c. cold butter

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 c. ice water

This pie crust will be "blind baked" to prevent a soggy bottom pie. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

In a food processor, mix all ingredients except the water. Blend until the mixture resembles sand with pea sized globs of butter. Slowly start adding the ice water (not the ice cubes), until the dough comes together. Just pulse and dribble in the water. Check every few pulses to see if they pastry is coming together.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and press the dough into a ball. Divide the dough into two halves. DO NOT OVERWORK or KNEAD. Place each ball onto a piece of plastic wrap and press into a disk. Put discs into the refrigerator for 30 minutes minimum.

After 30 minutes, place dough ball onto a floured surface and roll to 9" to fit your pie plate. Add a piece of parchment paper onto the pie dough and fill with either pie weights or dried beans or dried rice. The purpose is to just weigh down the parchment and keep the bottom of the pie from rising.

Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool while making the filling.

FOR THE FILLING

5-6 large tomatoes, sliced to medium thickness

10 fresh basil leaves, chopped

1 small sweet onion, sliced thinly

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 c. parmesan cheese shredded

1 1/2 c. sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

3/4 cup mayonnaise

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat over to 400 degrees.

Set sliced tomatoes on a rack (over the sink or a cookie sheet with sides), and salt both sides. Allow the tomatoes to drain their "juice" for 30 minutes. Every 10 minutes or so, press down on the slices to push more juice out.

In medium bowl, mix garlic, mayonnaise and cheese. Mix well. and set aside.

Remove pie weights and parchment paper from the baked crust.

Line the bottom of the crust with 1/2 of the drained tomatoes, overlapping as necessary. Add 1/2 of the sliced onions on top of the tomatoes. Add 1/2 of the chopped basil on top of the onions. Cover with 1/2 the cheese mixture.

Repeat for a second layer, making sure you top with the cheese mixture.

Cover the pie with foil. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Remove foil and continue baking for an additional 10-15 minutes.

Place baked pie on top of a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before cutting.

Serve with a fresh lettuce salad with a Balsamic Vinaigrette.

Enjoy and comment to let me know if you loved it!